More English than the English.—A day in the Bush.—Immigration.—A case of spirit return.—A Séance.—Geelong.—The lava plain.—Good-nature of General Ryrie.—Bendigo.—Down a gold mine.—Prohibition v. Continuance.—Mrs. Knight MacLellan.—Nerrin.—A wild drive.—Electric shearing.—Rich sheep stations.—Cockatoo farmers.—Spinnifex and Mallee.—Rabbits.—The great marsh.
More English than the English.—A day in the Bush.—Immigration.—A case of spirit return.—A Séance.—Geelong.—The lava plain.—Good-nature of General Ryrie.—Bendigo.—Down a gold mine.—Prohibition v. Continuance.—Mrs. Knight MacLellan.—Nerrin.—A wild drive.—Electric shearing.—Rich sheep stations.—Cockatoo farmers.—Spinnifex and Mallee.—Rabbits.—The great marsh.
In some ways the Australians are more English than the English. We have been imperceptibly Americanised, while our brethren over the sea have kept the old type. The Australian is less ready to show emotion, cooler in his bearing, more restrained in applause, more devoted to personal liberty, keener on sport, and quieter in expression (as witness the absence of scare lines in the papers) than our people are. Indeed, they remind me more of the Scotch than the English, and Melbourne on a Sunday, without posts, or Sunday papers, or any amenity whatever, is like the Edinburgh of my boyhood. Sydney is more advanced. There are curious anomalies in both towns. Their telephone systems are so bad that they can only be balanced against each other, for they are in a class by themselves. One smiles when one recollects that one used to grumble atthe London lines. On the other hand the tramway services in both towns are wonderful, and so continuous that one never hastens one's step to catch a tram since another comes within a minute. The Melbourne trams have open bogey cars in front, which make a drive a real pleasure.
One of our pleasant recollections in the early days of our Melbourne visit was a day in the bush with Mr. Henry Stead and his wife. My intense admiration for the moral courage and energy of the father made it easy for me to form a friendship with his son, who has shown the family qualities by the able way in which he has founded and conducted an excellent journal,Stead's Monthly. Australia was lucky ever to get such an immigrant as that, for surely an honest, fearless and clear-headed publicist is the most valuable man that a young country, whose future is one long problem play, could import. We spent our day in the Dandenong Hills, twenty miles from Melbourne, in a little hostel built in a bush clearing and run by one Lucas, of good English cricket stock, his father having played for Sussex. On the way we passed Madame Melba's place at Lilydale, and the wonderful woods with their strange tree-ferns seemed fit cover for such a singing bird. Coming back in Stead's light American car we tried a short cut down roads which proved to be almost impossible. A rather heavier car ahead of us, with two youths in it, got embedded in the mud, and we all dismounted to heave it out. There suddenly appeared on the lonely road an enormous coloured man; he looked like a cross between negro andblack fellow. He must have lived in some hut in the woods, but the way his huge form suddenly rose beside us was quite surprising. He stood in gloomy majesty surveying our efforts, and repeating a series of sentences which reminded one of German exercises. "I have no jack. I had a jack. Some one has taken my jack. This is called a road. It is not a road. There is no road." We finally levered out the Australian car, for which, by the way, neither occupant said a word of thanks, and then gave the black giant a shilling, which he received as a keeper takes his toll. On looking back I am not sure that this slough of despond is not carefully prepared by this negro, who makes a modest income by the tips which he gets from the unfortunates who get bogged in it. No keeper ever darted out to a trap quicker than he did when the car got stuck.
Stead agreed with me that the Australians do not take a big enough view of their own destiny. They—or the labour party, to be more exact—are inclined to buy the ease of the moment at the cost of the greatness of their continental future. They fear immigration lest it induce competition and pull down prices. It is a natural attitude. And yet that little fringe of people on the edge of that huge island can never adequately handle it. It is like an enormous machine with a six horsepower engine to drive it. I have a great sympathy with their desire to keep the British stock as pure as possible. But the land needs the men, and somewhere they must be found. I cannot doubt that they would become loyal subjects of theEmpire which had adopted them. I have wondered sometimes whether in Lower California and the warmer States of the Union there may not be human material for Australia. Canada has received no more valuable stock than from the American States, so it might be that another portion of the Union would find the very stamp of man that Queensland and the north require. The American likes a big gamble and a broad life with plenty of elbow-room. Let him bring his cotton seeds over to semi-tropical Australia and see what he can make of it there.
To pass suddenly to other-worldly things, which are my mission. People never seem to realise the plain fact that one positive result must always outweigh a hundred negative ones. It only needs one single case of spirit return to be established, and there is no more to be said. Incidentally, how absurd is the position of those wiseacres who say "nine-tenths of the phenomena are fraud." Can they not see that if they grant us one-tenth, they grant us our whole contention?
These remarks are elicited by a case which occurred in 1883 in Melbourne, and which should have converted the city as surely as if an angel had walked down Collins Street. Yet nearly forty years later I find it as stagnant and material as any city I have ever visited. The facts are these, well substantiated by documentary and official evidence. Mr. Junor Browne, a well-known citizen, whose daughter afterwards married Mr. Alfred Deakin, subsequently Premier,had two sons, Frank and Hugh. Together with a seaman named Murray they went out into the bay in their yacht the "Iolanthe," and they never returned. The father was fortunately a Spiritualist and upon the second day of their absence, after making all normal inquiries, he asked a sensitive, Mr. George Spriggs, formerly of Cardiff, if he would trace them. Mr. Spriggs collected some of the young men's belongings, so as to get their atmosphere, and then he was able by psychometry to give an account of their movements, the last which he could see of them being that they were in trouble upon the yacht and that confusion seemed to reign aboard her. Two days later, as no further news was brought in, the Browne family held a séance, Mr. Spriggs being the medium. He fell into trance and the two lads, who had been trained in spiritual knowledge and knew the possibilities, at once came through. They expressed their contrition to their mother, who had desired them not to go, and they then gave a clear account of the capsizing of the yacht, and how they had met their death, adding that they had found themselves after death in the exact physical conditions of happiness and brightness which their father's teaching had led them to expect. They brought with them the seaman Murray, who also said a few words. Finally Hugh, speaking through the medium, informed Mr. Browne that Frank's arm and part of his clothing had been torn off by a fish.
"A shark?" asked Mr. Browne.
"Well, it was not like any shark I have seen."
Mark the sequel. Some weeks later a large shark of a rare deep-sea species, unknown to the fishermen, and quite unlike the ordinary blue shark with which the Brownes were familiar, was taken at Frankston, about twenty-seven miles from Melbourne. Inside it was found the bone of a human arm, and also a watch, some coins, and other articles which had belonged to Frank Browne. These facts were all brought out in the papers at the time, and Mr. Browne put much of it on record in print before the shark was taken, or any word of the missing men had come by normal means. The facts are all set forth in a little book by Mr. Browne himself, called "A Rational Faith." What have fraudulent mediums and all the other decoys to do with such a case as that, and is it not perfectly convincing to any man who is not perverse? Personally, I value it not so much for the evidence of survival, since we have that so complete already, but for the detailed account given by the young men of their new conditions, so completely corroborating what so many young officers, cut off suddenly in the war, have said of their experience. "Mother, if you could see how happy we are, and the beautiful home we are in, you would not weep except for joy. I feel so light in my spiritual body and have no pain, I would not exchange this life for earth life even it were in my power. Poor spirits without number are waiting anxiously to communicate with their friends when an opportunity is offered." The young Brownes had the enormous advantage of the education they had received fromtheir father, so that they instantly understood and appreciated the new conditions.
On October 8th we had a séance with Mrs. Hunter, a pleasant middle-aged woman, with a soft South of England accent. Like so many of our mediums she had little sign of education in her talk. It does not matter in spiritual things, though it is a stumbling block to some inquirers. After all, how much education had the apostles? I have no doubt they were very vulgar provincial people from the average Roman point of view. But they shook the world none the less. Most of our educated people have got their heads so crammed with things that don't matter that they have no room for the things that do matter. There was no particular success at our sitting, but I have heard that the medium is capable of better things.
On October 13th I had my first experience of a small town, for I went to Geelong and lectured there. It was an attentive and cultured audience, but the hall was small and the receipts could hardly have covered the expenses. However, it is the press report and the local discussion which really matter. I had little time to inspect Geelong, which is a prosperous port with 35,000 inhabitants. What interested me more was the huge plain of lava which stretches around it and connects it with Melbourne. This plain is a good hundred miles across, and as it is of great depth one can only imagine that there must be monstrous cavities inside the earth to correspond with the huge amount extruded. Here and thereone sees stunted green cones which are the remains of the volcanoes which spewed up all this stuff. The lava has disintegrated on the surface to the extent of making good arable soil, but the harder bits remain unbroken, so that the surface is covered with rocks, which are used to build up walls for the fields after the Irish fashion. Every here and there a peak of granite has remained as an island amid the lava, to show what was there before the great outflow. Eruptions appear to be caused by water pouring in through some crack and reaching the heated inside of the earth where the water is turned to steam, expands, and so gains the force to spread destruction. If this process went on it is clear that the whole sea might continue to pour down the crack until the heat had been all absorbed by the water. I have wondered whether the lava may not be a clever healing process of nature, by which this soft plastic material is sent oozing out in every direction with the idea that it may find the crack and then set hard and stop it up. Wild speculation no doubt, but the guess must always precede the proof.
The Australians are really a very good-natured people. It runs through the whole race, high and low. A very exalted person, the Minister of War, shares our flat in the hotel, his bedroom being imbedded among our rooms. This is General Sir Granville Ryrie, a famous hero of Palestine, covered with wounds and medals—a man, too, of great dignity of bearing. As I was dressing one morning I heard some rather monotonous whistlingand, forgetting the very existence of the General, and taking it for granted that it was my eldest boy Denis, I put my head out and said, "Look here, old chap, consider other people's nerves and give up that rotten habit of whistling before breakfast." Imagine my feelings when the deep voice of the General answered, "All right, Sir Arthur, I will!" We laughed together over the incident afterwards, and I told him that he had furnished me with one more example of Australian good humour for my notes.
On October 13th I was at the prosperous 50,000 population town of Bendigo, which every one, except the people on the spot, believes to have been named after the famous boxer. This must surely be a world record, for so far as my memory serves, neither a Grecian Olympic athletic, nor a Roman Gladiator, nor a Byzantine Charioteer, has ever had a city for a monument. Borrow, who looked upon a good honest pugilist as the pick of humanity, must have rejoiced in it. Is not valour the basis of all character, and where shall we find greater valour than theirs? Alas, that most of them began and ended there! It is when the sage and the saint build on the basis of the fighter that you have the highest to which humanity can attain.
I had a full hall at Bendigo, and it was packed, I am told, by real old-time miners, for, of course, Bendigo is still the centre of the gold mining industry. Mr. Smythe told me that it was quite a sight to see those rows of deeply-lined, bearded faces listening so intently to what I said of thatdestiny which is theirs as well as mine. I never had a better audience, and it was their sympathy which helped me through, for I was very weary that night. But however weary you may be, when you climb upon the platform to talk about this subject, you may be certain that you will be less weary when you come off. That is my settled conviction after a hundred trials.
On the morning after my lecture I found myself half a mile nearer to dear Old England, for I descended the Unity mine, and they say that the workings extend to that depth. Perhaps I was not at the lowest level, but certainly it was a long journey in the cage, and reminded me of my friend Bang's description of the New York elevator, when he said that the distance to his suburban villa and his town flat was the same, but the one was horizontal and the other perpendicular.
It was a weird experience that peep into the profound depths of the great gold mine. Time was when the quartz veins were on the surface for the poor adventurer to handle. Now they have been followed underground, and only great companies and costly machinery can win it. Always it is the same white quartz vein with the little yellow specks and threads running through it. We were rattled down in pitch darkness until we came to a stop at the end of a long passage dimly lit by an occasional guttering candle. Carrying our own candles, and clad in miner's costume we crept along with bent heads until we came suddenly out into a huge circular hall which mighthave sprung from Doré's imagination. The place was draped with heavy black shadows, but every here and there was a dim light. Each light showed where a man was squatting toad-like, a heap of broken debris in front of him, turning it over, and throwing aside the pieces with clear traces of gold. These were kept for special treatment, while the rest of the quartz was passed in ordinary course through the mill. These scattered heaps represented the broken stuff after a charge of dynamite had been exploded in the quartz vein. It was strange indeed to see these squatting figures deep in the bowels of the earth, their candles shining upon their earnest faces and piercing eyes, and to reflect that they were striving that the great exchanges of London and New York might be able to balance with bullion their output of paper. This dim troglodyte industry was in truth the centre and mainspring of all industries, without which trade would stop. Many of the men were from Cornwall, the troll among the nations, where the tools of the miner are still, as for two thousand years, the natural heritage of the man. Dr. Stillwell, the geologist of the company, and I had a long discussion as to where the gold came from, but the only possible conclusion was that nobody knew. We know now that the old alchemists were perfectly right and that one metal may change into another. Is it possible that under some conditions a mineral may change into a metal? Why should quartz always be the matrix? Some geological Darwin will come along some day and we shall get a greatawakening, for at present we are only disguising our own ignorance in this department of knowledge. I had always understood that quartz was one of the old igneous primeval rocks, and yet here I saw it in thin bands, sandwiched in between clays and slates and other water-borne deposits. The books and the strata don't agree.
These smaller towns, like the Metropolis itself, are convulsed with the great controversy between Prohibition and Continuance, no reasonable compromise between the two being suggested. Every wall displays posters, on one side those very prosperous-looking children who demand that some restraint be placed upon their daddy, and on the other hair-raising statements as to the financial results of restricting the publicans. To the great disgust of every decent man they have run the Prince into it, and some remark of his after his return to England has been used by the liquor party. It is dangerous for royalty to be jocose in these days, but this was a particularly cruel example of the exploitation of a harmless little joke. If others felt as I did I expect it cost the liquor interest many a vote.
We had another séance, this time with Mrs. Knight MacLellan, after my return from Bendigo. She is a lady who has grown grey in the service of the cult, and who made a name in London when she was still a child by her mediumistic powers. We had nothing of an evidential character that evening save that one lady who had recently lost her son had his description and an appositemessage given. It was the first of several tests which we were able to give this lady, and before we left Melbourne she assured us that she was a changed woman and her sorrow for ever gone.
On October 18th began a very delightful experience, for my wife and I, leaving our party safe in Melbourne, travelled up country to be the guests of the Hon. Agar Wynne and his charming wife at their station of Nerrin-Nerrin in Western Victoria. It is about 140 miles from Melbourne, and as the trains are very slow, the journey was not a pleasant one. But that was soon compensated for in the warmth of the welcome which awaited us. Mr. Agar Wynne was Postmaster-General of the Federal Government, and author of several improvements, one of which, the power of sending long letter-telegrams at low rates during certain hours was a triumph of common sense. For a shilling one could send quite a long communication to the other end of the Continent, but it must go through at the time when the telegraph clerk had nothing else to do.
It was interesting to us to find ourselves upon an old-established station, typical of the real life of Australia, for cities are much the same the world over. Nerrin had been a sheep station for eighty years, but the comfortable verandahed bungalow house, with every convenience within it, was comparatively modern. What charmed us most, apart from the kindness of our hosts, was a huge marsh or lagoon which extended for many miles immediately behind the house, and whichwas a bird sanctuary, so that it was crowded with ibises, wild black swans, geese, ducks, herons and all sorts of fowl. We crept out of our bedroom in the dead of the night and stood under the cloud-swept moon listening to the chorus of screams, hoots, croaks and whistles coming out of the vast expanse of reeds. It would make a most wonderful hunting ground for a naturalist who was content to observe and not to slay. The great morass of Nerrin will ever stand out in our memories.
Next day we were driven round the borders of this wonderful marsh, Mr. Wynne, after the Australian fashion, taking no note of roads, and going right across country with alarming results to anyone not used to it. Finally, the swaying and rolling became so terrific that he was himself thrown off the box seat and fell down between the buggy and the front wheel, narrowly escaping a very serious accident. He was able to show us the nests and eggs which filled the reed-beds, and even offered to drive us out into the morass to inspect them, a proposal which was rejected by the unanimous vote of a full buggy. I never knew an answer more decidedly in the negative. As we drove home we passed a great gum tree, and half-way up the trunk was a deep incision where the bark had been stripped in an oval shape some four foot by two. It was where some savage in days of old had cut his shield. Such a mark outside a modern house with every amenity of cultured life is an object lesson of how two systems have over-lapped, and how short a time it is since this greatcontinent was washed by a receding wave, ere the great Anglo-Saxon tide came creeping forward.
Apart from the constant charm of the wild life of the marsh there did not seem to be much for the naturalist around Nerrin. Opossums bounded upon the roof at night and snakes were not uncommon. A dangerous tiger-snake was killed on the day of our arrival. I was amazed also at the size of the Australian eels. A returned soldier had taken up fishing as a trade, renting a water for a certain time and putting the contents, so far as he could realise them, upon the market. It struck me that after this wily digger had passed that way there would not be much for the sportsman who followed him. But the eels were enormous. He took a dozen at a time from his cunning eel-pots, and not one under six pounds. I should have said that they were certainly congers had I seen them in England.
I wonder whether all this part of the country has not been swept by a tidal wave at some not very remote period. It is a low coastline with this great lava plain as a hinterland, and I can see nothing to prevent a big wave even now from sweeping the civilisation of Victoria off the planet, should there be any really great disturbance under the Pacific. At any rate, it is my impression that it has actually occurred once already, for I cannot otherwise understand the existence of great shallow lakes of salt water in these inland parts. Are they not the pools left behind by that terrible tide? There are great banks of sand, too, here and there on the top of the lava which I can in noway account for unless they were swept here in some tremendous world-shaking catastrophe which took the beach from St. Kilda and threw it up at Nerrin. God save Australia from such a night as that must have been if my reading of the signs be correct.
[128]A TYPICAL AUSTRALIAN BACK-COUNTRY SCENE. By H. J. Johnstone, a great painter who died unknown.See page 127.A TYPICAL AUSTRALIAN BACK-COUNTRY SCENE.By H. J. Johnstone, a great painter who died unknown.(Painting in Adelaide National Gallery.)
See page 127.
A TYPICAL AUSTRALIAN BACK-COUNTRY SCENE.By H. J. Johnstone, a great painter who died unknown.(Painting in Adelaide National Gallery.)
One of the sights of Nerrin is the shearing of the sheep by electric machinery. These sheep are merinos, which have been bred as wool-producers to such an extent that they can hardly see, and the wool grows thick right down to their hoofs. The large stately creature is a poor little shadow when his wonderful fleece has been taken from him. The electric clips with which the operation is performed, are, I am told, the invention of a brother of Garnet Wolseley, who worked away at the idea, earning the name of being a half-crazy crank, until at last the invention materialised and did away with the whole slow and clumsy process of the hand-shearer. It is not, however, a pleasant process to watch even for a man, far less a sensitive woman, for the poor creatures get cut about a good deal in the process. The shearer seizes a sheep, fixes him head up between his knees, and then plunges the swiftly-moving clippers into the thick wool which covers the stomach. With wonderful speed he runs it along and the creature is turned out of its covering, and left as bare as a turkey in a poulterer's window, but, alas, its white and tender skin is too often gashed and ripped with vivid lines of crimson by the haste and clumsiness of the shearer. It was worse, they say, in the days of the hand-shearer.I am bound to say, however, that the creature makes no fuss about it, remains perfectly still, and does not appear to suffer any pain. Nature is often kinder than we know, even to her most humble children, and some soothing and healing process seems to be at work.
The shearers appear to be a rough set of men, and spend their whole time moving in gangs from station to station, beginning up in the far north and winding up on the plains of South Australia. They are complete masters of the situation, having a powerful union at their back. They not only demand and receive some two pounds a day in wages, but they work or not by vote, the majority being able to grant a complete holiday. It is impossible to clip a wet sheep, so that after rain there is an interval of forced idleness, which may be prolonged by the vote of the men. They work very rapidly, however, when they are actually at it, and the man who tallies most fleeces, called "the ringer," receives a substantial bonus. When the great shed is in full activity it is a splendid sight with the row of stooping figures, each embracing his sheep, the buzz of the shears, the rush of the messengers who carry the clip to the table, the swift movements of the sorters who separate the perfect from the imperfect wool, and the levering and straining of the packers who compress it all into square bundles as hard as iron with 240 pounds in each. With fine wool at the present price of ninety-six pence a pound it is clear that each of these cubes stands for nearly a hundred pounds.
They are rich men these sheep owners—and I am speaking here of my general inquiry and not at all of Nerrin. On a rough average, with many local exceptions, one may say that an estate bears one sheep to an acre, and that the sheep may show a clear profit of one pound in the year. Thus, after the first initial expense is passed, and when the flock has reached its full, one may easily make an assessment of the owner's income. Estates of 10,000 acres are common, and they run up to 50,000 and 60,000 acres. They can be run so cheaply that the greater part of income is clear profit, for when the land is barb-wired into great enclosures no shepherds are needed, and only a boundary rider or two to see that all is in order. These, with a few hands at lambing time, and two or three odd-job men at the central station, make up the whole staff. It is certainly the short cut to a fortune if one can only get the plant running.
Can a man with a moderate capital get a share of these good things? Certainly he can if he have grit and a reasonable share of that luck which must always be a factor in Nature's processes. Droughts, floods, cyclones, etc., are like the zero at Monte Carlo, which always may turn up to defeat the struggling gamester. I followed several cases where small men had managed to make good. It is reckoned that the man who gets a holding of from 300 to 500 acres is able on an average in three years to pay off all his initial expenses and to have laid the foundations of a career which may lead to fortune. One case was a London baker who knew nothing of the work. He had 300 acres and hadlaid it out in wheat, cows, sheep and mixed farming. He worked from morning to night, his wife was up at four, and his child of ten was picking up stones behind the furrow. But he was already making his £500 a year. The personal equation was everything. One demobilised soldier was doing well. Another had come to smash. Very often a deal is made between the small man and the large holder, by which the latter lets the former a corner of his estate, taking a share, say one-third, of his profits as rent. That is a plan which suits everyone, and the landlord can gradually be bought out by the "cockatoo farmer," as he is styled.
There is a great wool-clip this year, and prices in London are at record figures, so that Australia, which only retains 17 per cent. of her own wool, should have a very large sum to her credit. But she needs it. When one considers that the debt of this small community is heavier now than that of Great Britain before the war, one wonders how she can ever win through. But how can anyone win through? I don't think we have fairly realised the financial problem yet, and I believe that within a very few years there will be an International Council which will be compelled to adopt some such scheme as the one put forward by my friend, Mr. Stilwell, under the name of "The Great Plan." This excellent idea was that every nation should reduce its warlike expenditure to an absolute minimum, that the difference between this minimum and the 1914 pre-war standard should be paid every year to a centralfund, and that international bonds be now drawn upon the security of that fund, anticipating not its present amount but what it will represent in fifty years' time. It is, in fact, making the future help the present, exactly as an estate which has some sudden great call upon it might reasonably anticipate or mortgage its own development. I believe that the salvation of the world may depend upon some such plan, and that the Council of the League of Nations is the agency by which it could be made operative.
Australia has had two plants which have been a perfect curse to her as covering the land and offering every impediment to agriculture. They are the Spinnifex in the West and the Mallee scrub in the East. The latter was considered a hopeless proposition, and the only good which could be extracted from it was that the root made an ideal fire, smouldering long and retaining heat. Suddenly, however, a genius named Lascelles discovered that this hopeless Mallee land was simply unrivalled for wheat, and his schemes have now brought seven million acres under the plough. This could hardly have been done if another genius, unnamed, had not invented a peculiar and ingenious plough, the "stump-jump plough," which can get round obstacles without breaking itself. It is not generally known that Australia really heads the world for the ingenuity and efficiency of her agricultural machinery. There is an inventor and manufacturer, MacKay, of Sunshine, who represents the last word in automatic reapers, etc. He exports them, a shiploadat a time, to the United States, which, if one considers the tariff which they have to surmount, is proof in itself of the supremacy of the article. With this wealth of machinery the real power of Australia in the world is greater than her population would indicate, for a five-million nation, which, by artificial aid, does the work normally done by ten million people, becomes a ten-million nation so far as economic and financial strength is concerned.
On the other hand, Australia has her hindrances as well as her helps. Certainly the rabbits have done her no good, though the evil is for the moment under control. An efficient rabbiter gets a pound a day, and he is a wise insurance upon any estate, for the creatures, if they get the upper-hand, can do thousands of pounds' worth of damage. This damage takes two shapes. First, they eat on all the grass and leave nothing at all for the sheep. Secondly, they burrow under walls, etc., and leave the whole place an untidy ruin. Little did the man who introduced the creature into Australia dream how the imprecations of a continent would descend upon him.
Alas! that we could not linger at Nerrin; but duty was calling at Melbourne. Besides, the days of the Melbourne Cup were at hand, and not only was Mr. Wynne a great pillar of the turf, but Mr. Osborne, owner of one of the most likely horses in the race, was one of the house-party. To Melbourne therefore we went. We shall always, however, be able in our dreams to revisit that broad verandah, the low hospitable façade, thelovely lawn with its profusion of scented shrubs, the grove of towering gum trees, where the opossums lurked, and above all the great marsh where with dark clouds drifting across the moon we had stolen out at night to hear the crying of innumerable birds. That to us will always be the real Australia.
The Melbourne Cup.—Psychic healing.—M. J. Bloomfield.—My own experience.—Direct healing.—Chaos and Ritual.—Government House Ball.—The Rescue Circle again.—Sitting with Mrs. Harris.—A good test case.—Australian botany.—The land of myrtles.—English cricket team.—Great final meeting in Melbourne.
The Melbourne Cup.—Psychic healing.—M. J. Bloomfield.—My own experience.—Direct healing.—Chaos and Ritual.—Government House Ball.—The Rescue Circle again.—Sitting with Mrs. Harris.—A good test case.—Australian botany.—The land of myrtles.—English cricket team.—Great final meeting in Melbourne.
It was the week of weeks in Melbourne when we returned from Nerrin, and everything connected with my mission was out of the question. When the whole world is living vividly here and now there is no room for the hereafter. Personally, I fear I was out of sympathy with it all, though we went to the Derby, where the whole male and a good part of the female population of Melbourne seemed to be assembled, reinforced by contingents from every State in the Federation. A fine handsome body of people they are when you see themen masse, strong, solid and capable, if perhaps a little lacking in those finer and more spiritual graces which come with a more matured society. The great supply of animal food must have its effect upon the mind as well as the body of a nation. Lord Forster appeared at the races, and probably, as an all round sportsman, took a genuine interest, but the fate of the Governor who did not take an interest would be a ratherweary one—like that kind-hearted Roman Emperor, Claudius, if I remember right, who had to attend the gladiatorial shows, but did his business there so as to distract his attention from the arena. We managed to get out of attending the famous Melbourne Cup, and thereby found the St. Kilda Beach deserted for once, and I was able to spend a quiet day with my wife watching the children bathe and preparing for the more strenuous times ahead.
One psychic subject which has puzzled me more than any other, is that of magnetic healing. All my instincts as a doctor, and all the traditional teaching of the profession, cry out against unexplained effects, and the opening which their acceptance must give to the quack. The man who has paid a thousand pounds for his special knowledge has a natural distaste when he sees a man who does not know the subclavian artery from the pineal gland, effecting or claiming to effect cures on some quite unconventional line. And yet ... and yet!
The ancients knew a great deal which we have forgotten, especially about the relation of one body to another. What did Hippocrates mean when he said, "The affections suffered by the body the soul sees with shut eyes?" I will show you exactly what he means. My friend, M. J. Bloomfield, as unselfish a worker for truth as the world can show, tried for nearly two years to develop the medical powers of a clairvoyant. Suddenly the result was attained, without warning. He was walking with a friend in Collins Street laughingover some joke. In an instant the laugh was struck from his lips. A man and woman were walking in front, their backs towards Bloomfield. To his amazement he saw the woman's inner anatomy mapped out before him, and especially marked a rounded mass near the liver which he felt intuitively should not be there. His companion rallied him on his sudden gravity, and still more upon the cause of it, when it was explained. Bloomfield was so certain, however, that the vision was for a purpose, that he accosted the couple, and learned that the woman was actually about to be operated on for cancer. He reassured them, saying that the object seemed clearly defined and not to have widespread roots as a cancer might have. He was asked to be present at the operation, pointed out the exact place where he had seen the growth, and saw it extracted. It was, as he had said, innocuous. With this example in one's mind the words of Hippocrates begin to assume a very definite meaning. I believe that the surgeon was so struck by the incident that he was most anxious that Bloomfield should aid him permanently in his diagnoses.
I will now give my own experience with Mr. Bloomfield. Denis had been suffering from certain pains, so I took him round as a test case. Bloomfield, without asking the boy any questions, gazed at him for a couple of minutes. He then said that the pains were in the stomach and head, pointing out the exact places. The cause, he said, was some slight stricture in the intestine and he proceeded to tell me several facts of Denis's early historywhich were quite correct, and entirely beyond his normal knowledge. I have never in all my experience of medicine known so accurate a diagnosis.
Another lady, whom I knew, consulted him for what she called a "medical reading." Without examining her in any way he said: "What a peculiar throat you have! It is all pouched inside." She admitted that this was so, and that doctors in London had commented upon it. By his clairvoyant gift he could see as much as they with their laryngoscopes.
Mr. Bloomfield has never accepted any fees for his remarkable gifts. Last year he gave 3,000 consultations. I have heard of mediums with similar powers in England, but I had never before been in actual contact with one. With all my professional prejudices I am bound to admit that they have powers, just as Braid and Esdaile, the pioneers of hypnotism, had powers, which must sooner or later be acknowledged.
There are, as I understand it, at least two quite different forms of psychic healing. In such cases as those quoted the result may be due only to subtle powers of the human organism which some have developed and others have not. The clairvoyance and the instinctive knowledge may both belong to the individual. In the other cases, however, there are the direct action and advice of a wise spirit control, a deceased physician usually, who has added to his worldly stock of knowledge. He can, of course, only act through a medium—and just there, alas, is the dangerous opening forfraud and quackery. But if anyone wishes to study the operation at its best let him read a tiny book called "One thing I know," which records the cure of the writer, the sister of an Anglican canon, when she had practically been given up by doctors of this world after fifteen years of bed, but was rescued by the ministrations of Dr. Beale, a physician on the other side. Dr. Beale received promotion to a higher sphere in the course of the treatment, which was completed by his assistant and successor. It is a very interesting and convincing narrative.
We were invited to another spiritual meeting at the Auditorium. Individuality runs riot sometimes in our movement. On this occasion a concert had been mixed up with a religious service and the effect was not good, though the musical part of the proceedings disclosed one young violinist, Master Hames, who should, I think, make a name in the world. I have always been against ritual, and yet now that I see the effect of being without it I begin to understand that some form of it, however elastic, is necessary. The clairvoyance was good, if genuine, but it offends me to see it turned off and on like a turn at a music hall. It is either nonsense or the holy of holies and mystery of mysteries. Perhaps it was just this conflict between the priest with his ritual and the medium without any, which split the early Christian Church, and ended in the complete victory of the ritual, which meant the extinction not only of the medium but of the living, visible, spiritual forces which he represented. Flowers, music, incense, architecture, all tried to fill the gap,but the soul of the thing had gone out of it. It must, I suppose, have been about the end of the third century that the process was completed, and the living thing had set into a petrifaction. That would be the time no doubt when, as already mentioned, special correctors were appointed to make the gospel texts square with the elaborate machinery of the Church. Only now does the central fire begin to glow once more through the ashes which have been heaped above it.
We attended the great annual ball at the Government House, where the Governor-General and his wife were supported by the Governors of the various States, the vice-regal party performing their own stately quadrille with a dense hedge of spectators around them. There were few chaperons, and nearly every one ended by dancing, so that it was a cheerful and festive scene. My friend Major Wood had played with the Governor-General in the same Hampshire eleven, and it was singular to think that after many years they should meet again like this.
Social gaieties are somewhat out of key with my present train of thought, and I was more in my element next evening at a meeting of the Rescue Circle under Mr. Tozer. Mr. Love was the medium and it was certainly a very remarkable and consistent performance. Even those who might imagine that the different characters depicted were in fact various strands of Mr. Love's subconscious self, each dramatising its own peculiarities, must admit that it was a very absorbing exhibition. The circle sits round with prayerand hymns while Mr. Love falls into a trance state. He is then controlled by the Chinaman Quong, who is a person of such standing and wisdom in the other world, that other lower spirits have to obey him. The light is dim, but even so the characteristics of this Chinaman get across very clearly, the rolling head, the sidelong, humorous glance the sly smile, the hands crossed and buried in what should be the voluminous folds of a mandarin's gown. He greets the company in somewhat laboured English and says he has many who would be the better for our ministrations. "Send them along, please!" says Mr. Tozer. The medium suddenly sits straight and his whole face changes into an austere harshness. "What is this ribald nonsense?" he cries. "Who are you, friend?" says Tozer. "My name is Mathew Barret. I testified in my life to the Lamb and to Him crucified. I ask again: What is this ribald nonsense?" "It is not nonsense, friend. We are here to help you and to teach you that you are held down and punished for your narrow ideas, and that you cannot progress until they are more charitable." "What I preached in life I still believe." "Tell us, friend, did you find it on the other side as you had preached?" "What do you mean?" "Well, did you, for example, see Christ?" There was an embarrassed silence. "No, I did not." "Have you seen the devil?" "No, I have not." "Then, bethink you, friend, that there may be truth in what we teach." "It is against all that I have preached." A moment later the Chinaman was back with his rolling headand his wise smile. "He good man—stupid man. He learn in time. Plenty time before him."
We had a wonderful succession of "revenants." One was a very dignified Anglican, who always referred to the Control as "this yellow person." Another was an Australian soldier. "I never thought I'd take my orders from a 'Chink,'" said he, "but he says 'hist!' and by gum you've got to 'hist' and no bloomin' error." Yet another said he had gone down in theMonmouth. "Can you tell me anything of the action?" I asked. "We never had a chance. It was just hell." There was a world of feeling in his voice. He was greatly amused at their "sky-pilot," as he called the chaplain, and at his confusion when he found the other world quite different to what he had depicted. A terrifying Ghurkha came along, who still thought he was in action and charged about the circle, upsetting the medium's chair, and only yielding to a mixture of force and persuasion. There were many others, most of whom returned thanks for the benefit derived from previous meetings. "You've helped us quite a lot," they said. Between each the old Chinese sage made comments upon the various cases, a kindly, wise old soul, with just a touch of mischievous humour running through him. We had an exhibition of the useless apostolic gift of tongues during the evening, for two of the ladies present broke out into what I was informed was the Maori language, keeping up a long and loud conversation. I was not able to check it, but it was certainly acoherent language of some sort. In all this there was nothing which one could take hold of and quote as absolutely and finally evidential, and yet the total effect was most convincing. I have been in touch with some Rescue Circles, however, where the identity of the "patients," as we may call them, was absolutely traced.
As I am on the subject of psychic experiences I may as well carry on, so that the reader who is out of sympathy may make a single skip of the lot. Mrs. Susanna Harris, the American voice-medium, who is well known in London, had arrived here shortly after ourselves, and gave us a sitting. Mrs. Harris's powers have been much discussed, for while on the one hand she passed a most difficult test in London, where, with her mouth full of coloured water, she produced the same voice effects as on other occasions, she had no success in Norway when she was examined by their Psychic Research Committee; but I know how often these intellectuals ruin their own effects by their mental attitude, which acts like those anti-ferments which prevent a chemical effervescence. We must always get back to the principle, however, that one positive result is more important than a hundred negative ones—just as one successful demonstration in chemistry makes up for any number of failures. We cannot command spirit action, and we can only commiserate with, not blame, the medium who does not receive it when it is most desired. Personally I have sat four times with Mrs. Harris and I have not the faintest doubt that on each of these occasions I got true psychic results, though I cannot answer for what happens in Norway or elsewhere.